Dissertation on Birds of Prey and the Sport - the Falconry Heritage ...

quanto lo cielo de la terra i: maggio:
a simil di natura ben non tarda.47
The attitude towards loving a lady in the first sonnet, though retaining some stilnovistic
language, is very different. From distantly exalting the lady, it becomes physical and
erotic: "tenere una sua donna in brazo," which gives pleasure to Matteo's "intelletti," no
less. While Guido praises a specific lady in a typically stilnovistic way, Matteo
Correggiaio boasts of his love for women in general: he speaks of embracing "una sua
donna," not "la sua donna," the one and only. Guido mentions his enjoyment of
"ragionar d'amore;" Matteo likes to sing about it-and watch the ladies, whose "dolce
salute" nonetheless still affects the poet as one might expect.
This shift in perspective to a more erotic kind of love turns the hunt of love from a
metaphor for emotional relationships to one for physical relationships that, usually, exist
in the mind of the poet rather than in reality. Most falcons and hawks are found in
madrigals and cacce; these poems set to music for public entertainment lend themselves
to the narrative point of view. Hunting also meshes well with narrative, so that it is
natural that the poet's telling of hunting stories, in which he chases, and occasionally
catches, his love, are commonly put in madrigals and cacce: the chase of love becomes
an erotic narrative.48
The progression of the majority of these narratives in which falcons are involved,
and the poet's related success with the lady, can develop in general along one of two
lines. The poet, out hunting, follows his bird and happens to find a lady along the way,
47 From Neri, Folgore di San Gimignano: i sonetti, p. 86.
48 Although she does not treat the Trecento's poesia popolareggiante in her book, Boccassini makes a
similar observation regarding the evolution of visual art involving falcons in the Trecento (259):
" ... nell'iconografia trecentesca la similitudine falconaria tende a perdere la carica simbolica e ideale
originaria, e a farsi piu narrativa; i principi stessi della fin' amors e della falconeria vengono ad essere
dirottati verso letture che tendono ad accentuare la carica erotica dell'incontro degli amanti."